Flappy Bird's Massive Rise Can Be Traced To A Reddit Thread That Spun Out Of Control

Monday

Feb 10, 2014 at 1:59 PM

Megan Rose Dickey

Flappy Bird is the latest viral hit in the mobile gaming world. But on Sunday, the developer took down the game because it became way too popular, too quickly.

In the game, you have to help the bird safely fly through a bunch of obstacles by furiously tapping your screen.

As it turns out, the game essentially started on Reddit.

On November 17, 2013, Reddit user Bronxsta mentioned Flappy Bird in a list of "masochistic" iOS games on the iPhone gaming section of the site, according to Know Your Meme.

About a month ago, a Reddit user who goes by the name of "Transizzleator" posted the following, under a thread entitled "Please help Flappy Bird take off!":

Hey!

I have a great friend who's uncle developed an amazing game called Flappy Bird for all iOS devices and some help would be greatly appreciated.

It's free to play and if you could just take the time to download it (and recommend it to a friend if you like it) the help would be greatly appreciated.

No in-app purchases and more importantly it's fun! I don't benefit from this at all and am just trying to get a passed-up artist realized.

Thanks for all help in advance!

Late last month, YouTube user PewDiePie uploaded a video of him playing Flappy Bird. That video was viewed 5.4 million times.

Since then, Flappy Bird has quite literally taken off. But just two days ago, Nguyen tweeted that he would take down the game from both the iOS and Android app stores. He removed the game on February 9, and some people are not taking it well.

Business Insider has reached out to Nguyen and will update this story if we hear back.

For what it's worth, dotGears, Nguyen's development studio, has never promoted Flappy Bird on its site.

See Also:

'Flappy Bird' Creator Says He's Shutting The Game Down, Putting Us All Out Of Our MiseryReddit Users Are Going Nuts Because Apple Blocked Their Favorite Bitcoin AppYou Can Now Take Your Rage Out On Flappy Bird By Squishing Him To Death

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